


the night belongs to lovers

by Lydia_Martin_trash



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gardens & Gardening, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 11:03:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20993759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lydia_Martin_trash/pseuds/Lydia_Martin_trash
Summary: Navigating new relationships is hard, but Jaime and Brienne are up to the task. In their own way.





	the night belongs to lovers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [janie_tangerine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/gifts).

> This shameless fluff without plot is for Lavinia, because she's lovely and she deserves something with legitimate good intentions in her inbox for once.
> 
> Thank you Mis_Shapes for beta reading! Title is from "Because the night", by Patti Smith.
> 
> This was inspired by this post: https://dunderklumpen.net/post/188071601318/nikolaj-let-me-show-you-my-sex-fern

She gets home from work on Friday beyond exhausted from her shift and finds a cake box from her favorite bakery sitting on the counter. There are fragrant forget-me-nots in a new vase on the mantel, soft jazz coming from the radio in the bedroom. The responsible is asleep on an armchair in front of the fireplace, the reading glasses he usually hides askew and an open book laying on his chest.

Brienne approaches and lets herself run a hand through blonde hair still growing out from a shave, then touches from cheekbone to jaw. Jaime barely stirs, so she takes the glasses off his face and the book from his grasp.

At first she thinks it’s one of hers – Jaime isn’t into gardening as far as she knows, though he sometimes follows her to the flower beds in her father’s yard and pulls weeds with her – but no, it’s not anything she owns. All her books are about how to clean patches for sowing, types of soil, the best seasons for growing specific plants.

This one is on the language of flowers. There’s an inscription inside the cover, _About flowers to another flower, Mom and Dad_ and Brienne recognizes Catelyn’s hand, so at least she knows where that came from.

She doesn’t know the why, however.

Jaime wakes up when she’s finishing dinner. He enters the kitchen blurry-eyed and smiles a little as he watches her grabbing plates and setting them on the table.

“I meant to do that, Miss Detective Sergeant,” he comments.

Brienne smiles back at him. “It’s only pasta. I didn’t want to wake you, you looked so relaxed.”

“I got desert!” He exclaims, looking genuinely pleased with himself. “Did you see it yet?”

She shakes her head, and he walks to the counter, barely containing his excitement. Very carefully – he’s still unused to the new prosthetic hand – he brings the box over and deposits it on the table. Satisfied, he waves a hand in invitation, so Brienne opens it.

The fear that this is a prank, a joke, has passed long months ago. She doesn’t believe Jaime would ever be this intentionally cruel, so she could never believe that of him. And yet, sometimes Brienne still fails to fully grasp his character. She often underestimates, for example, how romantic Jaime can be. Like as soon as he had permission, as soon as he had the opportunity, he couldn’t wait to shower her with affection.

Now, for example. Inside the box, the cake is her favorite red velvet, decorated with fondant flowers and with red fondant cursive that reads _Happy 3rd Anniversary_. She’s speechless for a moment, so long that Jaime starts biting his lips.

“I know people usually don’t celebrate months, but any excuse is a good excuse for cake, right? And if it’s too much– ”

Brienne cuts him off with a kiss. Only after she’s taken him by the shirt and dragged him closer, after they’re chest to chest and panting on each other’s mouth, does it occur to her to be gentler. Jaime often makes her forget herself. She eases her hold and runs a hand over his hair again, pulling back. Jaime still has his eyes closed, but he’s smiling as he leans into her touch.

“The pasta will get cold,” she says.

“Nah, it’ll keep.” He opens his eyes and wiggles his eyebrows at her.

She grins and kisses him again, amazed that she can. They kiss for a long time, and when they finally separate after Brienne’s stomach rumbles loudly, they have to put the food to microwave before eating, but it’s worth it.

They eat slowly, with Brienne matching Jaime’s pace because he’s still self-conscious about his slow progress, but she doesn’t mind. She would spend all her time with him if she could. He’s doing a perfect imitation of Slynt and she’s nearly choking with laughter, when she remembers the book.

“I didn’t know you liked that kind of thing,” she says.

She’s not expecting the way he pinkens up to his hairline, but that’s exactly what he does.

“I was just, er… You’re interested in it, so I figured I would give it a chance.”

“Did Sansa lend the book to you?” She asks, already knowing he’s hiding something – she’s not been a cop for years now for nothing – but willing to let it lay. “She’s so sly! She didn’t tell me anything.”

“I asked her not to,” Jaime says. “It was meant to be a surprise.”

“You’re full of those today,” she says. “I’m glad I got something for you too.”

Then Brienne offers Jaime the box she had been hiding in her pocket and watches him open it, understanding his giddiness about the cake at last. Thankfully, he’s much more open than she was about his satisfaction.

“They were on sale,” she says before he can argue with her that he should be paying for the tickets, or that they should at least split the bill. The opera is not cheap, but she’s not so destitute she has to ask him for money.

He grins at her, waving the tickets in the air and sings:

_“Ich seh, wie ein Engel im rosigen Duft sich tröstend zur Seite mir stellet…”_

Brienne feels herself blush, but she can’t help grinning back.

Jaime has had a key to her apartment even before they started going out, when they were still working together. She had given it to him after the first time he knocked on her door in the middle of the night after a nightmare. How little did she understand back then, how annoyed and harsh she had been.

It makes her ashamed to remember her own initial reaction when all he had wanted was to be comforted, but humbled, too. And hopeful that Jaime will always feel safe next to her.

Now that they’re dating, there’s something different about his presence between these walls. If before he came here for safety and comfort, now he’s making her place his home.

Brienne has learned to be observant in her line of work, but Jaime is subtle enough that she doesn’t notice it at first. A pair of slippers materialize next to hers on the entrance, a bottle of the aftershave he uses on her bathroom. Small things that she dismisses as useful items to bring to sleep over. She works a lot and he spends more time than her in the apartment nowadays, still unsure if he wants to open a PI office or work with Tyrion, so he has time to execute his plan. She cleans a drawer for him of her own volition; next thing she knows, he has a whole side of the wardrobe for himself.

It goes on and on, until one day she comes home and discovers Jaime has moved in.

He’s not there when she arrives, for a change. Her first thought is that she’ll take this opportunity to remake the bed, because while she truly appreciates Jaime making it for her most mornings, his ability in doing so shows exactly how much of a rich kid he used to be. She’s certain it’s not the hand, because she’s seen him doing more complicated things. And it’s dumb, but she hasn’t found a way to say it to him yet, he always looks so pleased with himself when he does things for her, so remaking the bed to her taste behind his back it is.

Only there’s a fern on top of the clothing chest where she keeps the fitted sheets that wasn’t there before.

Brienne has a garden at her father’s and some plants around the apartment – a cactus on the bathroom and potted basil and rosemary in the kitchen windowsill – but she’d remember getting a Boston fern.

She’s still petting it softly in wonder when she hears the front door opening and rushes to the foyer.

Jaime is locking the door, a ridiculous amount of grocery bags hanging from his wrists. He promptly lets them all fall to the floor when she pins him to the wall and kisses him breathless. Once free, his hands travel the length of her arms, shoulders, then tangle on her hair. He pushes and she pushes back, and then they’re all but grinding against hers – theirs – front door.

“Not that I’m complaining,” he pants when she starts kissing his neck, “but what is the occasion? I could, _ahh_, I could get used to this kind of reception.”

“I saw the fern,” Brienne whispers against his skin, then goes back to sucking on it.

She stops when she hears his surprised laugh. When she looks at him, Jaime’s eyes are twinkling, satisfied.

“I knew you liked plants, but I never knew a simple fern would make you so hot,” he says.

But something about the way he says it tips her off. Brienne doesn’t know how she can be so certain, but she knows somehow that things have occurred just as he wanted.

She kisses him again, a peck, trying to put her finger on it, but ultimately lets it go. She has more important matters to discuss.

“I love you a lot,” she says against his lips.

“I love you too,” Jaime whispers, smiling.

“Were you ever telling me you were moving in?” She asks, taking a tiny step back.

Jaime tries to follow, but she holds him with a hand against the door, and he stays where she puts him, giving her a pleading look.

“Eventually. I mean, I pretty much live here already, but I still have some months on my lease,” he admits easily, then smirks. “Are you suggesting you don’t want me here?”

Brienne blushes – that’s just who she is at this point, she might as well embrace it – but she doesn’t deny it.

“Come on,” she says, picking up the groceries scattered around their feet. “Let's put those away and go to the bedroom.”

Jaime drops a just recovered ice-cream on the floor, eyes round with excitement. The container opens, splattering the floor and the bottom of Brienne’s jeans. She looks at him, confused.

“How about bedroom first?” He smiles at her. He tries to make his voice lower, huskier, but his eager tone of voice goes up an octave.

“We should at least put away whatever goes into the refrigerator and well, clean this up,” she says, tilting her head a little before she can stop herself. It’s a gesture she picked up from hanging around Sansa, Brienne knows, but it doesn’t look nearly as graceful on her. “And it’s just trading a task for another in the end.”

“If we must… But I wouldn’t call it a task, Brienne. You’re cold.” Jaime smirks. “I’ve been waiting for you to bring it up, to be honest.”

“Really?” She chuckles, half-amused, half-embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Jaime, I didn’t realize I was being obvious… I should have told you before, but I’m glad you see my point. It’s such a small thing, but if you don’t fold the hem just right, the sheet won’t fit the mattress properly and it’ll keep sliding off while we sleep.”

Jaime nods at her explanation a bit mechanically. His cheeks go pink, all his early confidence falling away, but he insists on helping her put the groceries away and then follows her directions on how to remake the bed.

Later, when they’re both in pajamas and ready to bed, he’s back to his normal humorous self until he takes the prosthetic off with a groan. It’s automatic – Brienne cradles the stump on her hands and massages it until he sighs, free of pain. Or at least in less pain than before. She finishes their night routine with a kiss to the scarred skin and lays down by his side.

Jaime immediately comes closer and buries his face on her shoulder, letting her hug him.

She reaches over to turn the reading lamp off, just to come face to face with the look on his face. Brienne half expects him to melt like butter as he looks at him, reddening again.

“What?” She asks, bemused.

“Nothing, just… Well, I really do love you an awful lot.”

Brienne smiles at him, turns the lamp off and kisses him one last time before falling into peaceful sleep.

Brienne is behind the wheel the next day, waiting for Pod to come back with the entire precinct’s coffee order, when it hits her.

Sex. Jaime was talking about sex.

She tries to fight the sudden embarrassment, but it’s a lost cause. Her face is in flames when Pod comes back, and then it’s a struggle to convince him that yes, she really is alright and no, she doesn’t need to see a doctor and she’s not in pain.

It’s not like she has never considered sex in abstract, or even sex with Jaime. They have even talked about it, though only once. She has accepted that Jaime doesn’t only cares for her, he wants her, and that it’s only a matter of time before their relationship turns physical.

In theory. Faced with the reality of it, with the conscious awareness that it can happen as soon as she says so, Brienne balks.

Even though a big part of her is more than ready.

Jaime is older, more worldly, more experienced – if an incestuous relationship with a sister he cut all contact with counts for experience… – but more often than not, he takes his cues from Brienne.

_ I’ve been waiting for you to bring it up_, he had said.

Brienne has no excuse for why she didn’t notice the hints, the innuendo. She had just been too happy about him showing signs of commitment to notice anything else. And maybe she was a little scared, too.

But she’s nothing if not brave. That night, she is determined when she arrives.

Once again, Jaime is nowhere to be seen, but it’s nothing she wasn’t expected – he was going out with Tyrion and decided at last what to do with his share of the Lannister business. And he loves his brother, but the family operation always stresses him out, Brienne knows.

She decides he could use some stress relief when he gets back.

She showers the grim of the day away and fixes herself a light dinner that she barely eats. She does what needs doing around the house and some things that could have been put off for a while yet, and there’s no sign of Jaime appearing.

It’s useless to wonder what he likes when he’s not here to confirm or deny it, but she can’t help it. That’s where her mind goes. It shouldn’t be so nerve-wrecking; she’s seen Jaime sick, hurt, naked, laughing, singing, sleeping. She held him through nightmares and also just because he wanted cuddling. They’re so intimate that frankly, it shouldn’t matter if his cock is going to… to enter her tonight.

The more Brienne thinks about it, however, the more restless she gets. Nerves turn into anticipation.

Before long, she lets herself ponder on what she wants from him instead of the contrary, and her imagination runs wild. Brienne realizes she’s getting wet without anything even happening.

Feeling embarrassed and uncomfortably virginal, she changes into her pajamas – she’s too nervous already to try to pull anything like sexy tonight; comfy will have to do – and decides what she needs is a distraction.

She had noticed before, when she had first entered the bedroom, that Jaime has added another three ferns while she was away: two Maidenhair ferns and a Staghorn fern. They give the room a vivacity, a freshness that Brienne hadn’t even know it needed until it was there.

And they make her think of Jaime. Of their short but deliriously happy shared life.

Even more than she already does, that is.

The sign of the plants calm her somewhat. She might as well read about them, she decides. Jaime has a bit of a black thumb, and she wants those to last a long time.

She means to find one of her own books, but the one belonging to Sansa is sitting innocently at Jaime’s side of the bed. The cover is beautiful, with an illustration of a number of flowers in full bloom and a fairy smelling it. It catches her attention at once.

Improbable that a book on the language of flowers will have something about ferns, Brienne thinks. She is sorely mistaken. Soon she’s absorbed, a mix of incredulous and amused. She’s so focused she doesn’t hear Jaime opening the front door.

She feels his eyes on her, though, and she raises her gaze to find him watching her from the doorway where she’s standing by her side of the bed, too focused to even seat. His red tie already slack and blazer already discarded somewhere. He still manages to look purposefully disheveled instead of shabby. The look on his face is half defensive, half alight with eagerness.

What Brienne means to say is _how did the meeting go?_ or _how is Tyrion? _What she says instead is:

“Have you been populating our bedroom with ferns to “create sexual energy” in the room?”

Jaime starts unbuttoning his dress shirt as he walks inside the bedroom with a swing more charming than any men has any right to have.

“Did it work?” He winks at her.

Brienne is grinning despite herself.

“You tell me. Have you had much sex in this room lately?”

Jaime chuckles, laying on the bed with his shirt open, leaning seductively on the mattress.

“We can change that,” he grins and pats the mattress.

Brienne is tempted to jump right in, but she takes a step back instead with a colossal effort not to grin back at him, and arches an eyebrow as if to demand an explanation.

Jaime sighs, but Brienne knows she failed in looking stern because he doesn’t seem put out at all. Or maybe he’s too good at reading her.

“Okay, so I didn’t think it would work. But I hoped you’d get curious, find the book and read the signs. Which you did. We’re half-way to success now. Just say the word.”

“You could have picked a less obscure sign,” she remarks.

Jaime crosses his arms behind his head and his ankles on top of the duvet. Brienne wants to tell him she’s his already, that he’s beautiful and he doesn’t need to try so hard, but her mouth is getting dry.

She knows him too well, she knows what comes next.

“Oh, think you could do better, Miss Detective Sergeant?”

Wordlessly, she grabs her bag from the nightstand, reaches inside and throws a handful of condoms on the bed.

Afterwards, they lay side by side, touching only at their intertwined fingers. Brienne can’t stop grinning at the ceiling and when she finally manages it, it’s only to look at the wall in front of her and burst into girlish giggles.

Her pajama pants are hanging from one of the Maidenhair ferns.

Jaime follows her gaze and laughs too, but the sound soon stops as he sighs. It should be intimidating, the way he looks at her with such open adoration, but she’s finally ready to accept it fully. She only returns the look, knowing the same emotions are written on her face.

“Brienne… It was never like this, before. For me,” Jaime whispers. “Maybe we should accept the truth: the ferns work.”

Brienne swallows a couple more giggles before she’s able to answer. She’s never thought of herself as someone who giggles, not since she was ten years old, but maybe that’s just what sex with the love of your life does to people.

“Well, you put four of them here,” she reasons. “Let’s put one in the kitchen and one in the living room. It’ll spread the energy out.”

“Oh, yes. In the kitchen, the living room.” Jaime grins. “Anywhere you want, Miss Detective Sergeant.”

It’s a long time before they fall asleep that night.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are much appreciated if you got here, reader!


End file.
